Our Key Insights from EXECinsurtech 2018

EXECinsurtech 2018 was definitely one of the most fantastic events in the IT world this year. It was bright, newcomer-friendly and far-reaching for startups of all sizes.

EXECinsurtech was an event we attended as a sponsor instead of being an exhibitor. This role allowed us to discover even more insights that can be life-changing for startups. Actually, we’ve started looking at startups a little bit differently thanks to this outstanding experience.

We’ve gained so many insights during the event that, unfortunately, it would be impossible to share them all here in a couple of words. What we can share is this main takeaway: being passionate about the product you develop or the service you offer is important, but you need to be dedicated to understanding the market as well.

Insights from 3 Top InsurTech Players

Below you can find the most valuable insights from some of the companies and investors that took part in EXECinsurtech 2018. We invite you to take a look.

Mark Klein, ERGO Group

“It’s not enough to have a great idea, a smart team, follow the latest technological trends and stick to your business model. No! You always have to think about your product on the market and how to scale it both vertically and horizontally!”

Venture Capitalists quotes:
“The main issue of the industry is terrible user experience. The whole InsurTech community is working on it, but the implementation of the innovations is not as fast as we expected.

Another issue to think about is regulation and the latest update – GDPR. It’s hard to find the right way to follow the latest regulation trends and keep the same speed implementing the innovations.

One of the options we see is to start the cooperation with the countries where this aspect is already fixed in the right way and it helps the business. To check if the idea will work, you can validate it on China market, to make sure that it will be interesting for the market. And after that – prepare everything for the implementation in Europe. But don’t be naive. Nobody helps you with the validation or investments if you cannot show the value of your product.”

Manuel Koelman, PIRATE.global

“10 years ago, everybody knew what to expect from the leading players on the market and could predict development trends. Today, the amount of technology companies is growing exponentially, and we cannot predict what situation will be in a year or two. It means that young startups, first of all, have to think about the market needs. They have to build a product that will fit the market and take care of their users. Pay attention to their satisfaction level.

The development of the startup depends on the users. Your client will never be 100% satisfied, and it’s good! It means that you have a reason to be better than you are now!

One more hint – you should look at the existing giants and take the best practices from them. Look at the Airbnb, for example. They provide people with housing but they don’t own any property, except for their office, I hope :). Uber gives you a car but they don’t have their auto park. It means that the future belongs to those who can see the opportunities where everybody else will see the limitations.”

3 Main Takeaways

As we’ve mentioned, if we wrote down every insight we gained during those two days, this would a very long read. So, we took the liberty to choose three main pieces of advice for startups of any size. Here they are:

Startup development requires not only investments, right insurance partners and a great team, but patience and diligence as well. 80% of young companies don’t achieve any results because of impatience and lack of stability in the operational processes.

If you don’t have any substantial resources in your city, it makes sense to cooperate with an outsource development team. This will save you up to 40% in expenses (compared to a local development team) and, of course, your time. More and more people are interested in a remote position – and this is a global tendency. All you need is to pick up an agency in Ukraine, Romania or Poland and have them work on a small test task.

Test your idea on the market as soon as possible! Don’t try to create a perfect product – create a valuable product. Start testing your solution with end users as soon as possible to make sure your product will fit current market needs.

In Conclusion

Our insurance market research gave us a deep understanding of how to create an idea and how to test it. This is why we are interested in cooperating with the InsurTech startups – to share our knowledge and experience with them and enhance the industry as a whole. All in all, the right technical partner providing a young startup with reliable specialists and understanding of the market are what is the most incredibly important in the business world.